Tejas , Kangana Ranaut Makes An Impressive Woman In A Uniform

Tejas

Rating: *** ½

From the makers of the much-lauded war film Uri  comes this patriotic potboiler, and  I do mean  potboiler in a  positive way.

For two braveheart female airforce pilots to plunder their way into enemy territory to rescue an Indian hostage, is a wonderful and welcome whoosh of wishful thinking, and  I can’t help being impressed by  writer-director’s Sarvesh Mevara’s impunity at  doing a Top Gun with Kangana.

Ranaut has a whole harvest of heroic moments to herself. She is  an  ideal soldier  and a wonderful  daughter. There is a flashback where she brings her boyfriend(Varun Mitra who always looks like he forgot to check the gas in the kitchen before leaving home)to meet her  parents.

Tejas’ father sings a beautiful  Punjabi love song(although ironically  is his future son-in-law who is a singer). So much better than  frowning and smirking at  the daughter’s boyfriend.

Not that Tejas has too many surprises in store. As a rescue thriller , it works  fine as long as it stays focused on the  job on-hand . Luckily the storytelling is  not as ambitious  as  its protagonist.While Tejas wants to  do impossible, the  film never crosses the  line of daring, unless  staging the anti-terrorist climax at the  Ram Mandir can be considered a  feat  of derring do.

Also daring in its own right is the casting of wimpy Caucasians  as soldiers and politicians. The  Indian ambassador  to Norway looks so  diminished he  could be  a trapeze artist in a circus that has gone bankrupt.

On the plus  side there is a touching sequence featuring Kangana and veteran  actress Neena  Kulkarni, the latter as the mother  of the man taken hostage.There is also spirited Aafia(Anshul  Chauhan) who accompanies  Tejas on all her dangerous trips and  is  fairly  unlucky when it comes to her love life. When we first meet Afia she has just broken  up with her boyfriend  for two-timing: she was caught two-timing,that is.

Somehow Kangana Ranaut’s laughter in the above  sequence never reaches  beyond her throat. Tejas is  about her, and she never lets us forget it.